Sunday, September 2, 2012

Cohabitation Arrests, 1968-1972: Law and Order

In Tampa
in 1969 a young black militant, Otha Favors and his white girlfriend, Sharon
Clinkenbeard, were arrested for cohabitation, a crime in the state of Florida. Tampa police were reining
in black militants by charging them with minor violations of the law. Was it
the black power antiwar activist or the young black guy and his white
girlfriend that bothered the Tampa
police? Both Favors and Clinkenbeard served a week in jail before their
sentences were overturned. The US Supreme Court had declared Florida’s law against interracial cohabitation in 1964, but cohabitation, so long as it
was not a distinctly racial, remained a crime.

My
research for Not Just Roommates:
Cohabitation after the Sexual Revolution (Chicago, 2012) turned up a history usually
filed under the heading COINTELPRO or midnight raids on welfare mothers. In
fact, the sexual revolution of the late 1960s occurred in the midst of a
multiplicity of social movements, and especially in the midst of the welfare
rights movement and black power. The U.S. was
engaged in a culture war in the 1920s, the 1870s, and 1670s.Arguing about gender, sexuality, and family
is always arguing about something more—often the fate of the collectivity. If
there is a long tradition of conflict over religious and moral values in U.S. history,
what we might call the issues in the culture war are constantly changing.In the late 1960slaw and order prosecutors dusted off sex
crime laws to arrest hippies, black power advocates, interracial couples, and
women on welfare. Prosecutors in small,
highly religious towns and rural areas, especially in the Bible Belt, used
these laws against the “Easy Riders” who appeared in town and against the
young, the poor,racial minorities—black
power militants and not--defying traditional sexual and marital norms. Social
workers were spying on welfare mothers and the police were tracking black
militants but police internal investigation squads were also tracking the
sexual habits of their fellow officers living together.

The culture wars have become
increasingly associated with the polarization of the political parties—the red
and blue states—but the polarization was already there in the late 1960s. Law
and order was the Republican rallying cry. As in the case of Favors and
Clinkenbeard, at the extreme end an arrest for cohabitation could lead to a
brief time in jail. A study funded by
the Playboy Foundation found that there were at least 3241 prosecutions for
fornication and cohabitation between 1968 and 1972. The regulation of sexuality
was a little known feature of the law and order ethos. How could there be so
many prosecutions for cohabitation when young people on campus were so often
living together?Precisely because the
threat was perceived as growing and getting closer to home and because defying
sexual and marital norms were a key symbol of the threat, law and order meant
policing sexual revolution against a wide range of targeted groups. Policing
morality was directed not only at the poor and racial minorities and but also
at police officers, librarians, and teachers who were defying traditional rules
of sexuality and morality. The arrest of Favors and Clinkenbeard was the last
time a couple was arrested for the crime of cohabitation in Florida, but the law remains on the books,
despite repeated efforts to remove it.

3 comments:

Fascinating! Bill Stuntz argues in The Collapse of American Criminal Justice that America underwent two culture wars, one during the Progressive Era and one during the 1980s. I think he's wrong. As you argue, culture wars continued through the 1950s and 60s, particularly in the South. Getting your book!